Date Night on Union Station (8 page)

Ten

After the last two dates, Kelly was beginning to think of her black cocktail dress as a suit of armor to don before combat. She decided to wear her hair up for a change, since she was sure there would be no difficulty in connecting with a man who was wearing yellow pants. Did some evil ex-girlfriend tell him that the pants matched his hair? They were meeting at the People Bowl, in the high rent section of the Little Apple, and she was looking forward to seeing how the other half lived.

Kelly arrived just a little early and entered the People Bowl through a spooky tunnel that glowed with soft blue light. Her date was already waiting for her, yellow pants and all. He approached with a confident stride and produced a dozen roses from behind his back, like a conjuring trick.

“Thanks, I think I know these roses,” she said and accepted them graciously. “I’m Kelly, and you are?”

“Sangrid Khan,” he replied and indicated their table. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to our date.”

“That’s so sweet of you.” Kelly favored him with a warm smile, after which he shocked her by pulling out her chair to make it easier for her to take her place in the cramped restaurant. All of the restaurants and cafes on the station featured sardine tin seating due to the space constraints, but the People Bowl took crowding to a new level. A good third of the floor space was taken up with the broad base of a glass dome filled with a bright, translucent blue gas. As soon as she adjusted to the light, Kelly noticed that there were some darker blue stains floating within the gas, which circulated with an unseen current.

“Looks like the filter system for their fancy lighting is clogging up,” Kelly ventured to break the ice, as Sangrid studied the menu like it was a prop in a play. “Still, it’s a neat idea. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Ah, so this is your first time here. Those are Harrians floating about in the plasma. The gas is tetrafluoromethane, I believe.”

“Alright, never mind the tetrafloor-whatever, let’s focus on the Harrians. Are they animal, mineral or vegetable?”

“Hmm, I don’t think they fall into any of those categories, but they are definitely sentient. They pay to come and watch us eat. Apparently they find it refreshing, but only people with excellent vision can pick them out,” Sangrid explained complacently as he completed his perusal of the menu. “The pasta is very good here, and all of the salad ingredients are fresh from the ag decks. Do you have any special dietary constraints, or would you like me to order for you?”

“You can order, thanks. I eat pretty much everything,” Kelly replied.

“Omnivorous with stable digestion, that’s very good,” he praised her. “No food allergies that you’re aware of?”

“No, none at all,” Kelly replied with a grin. “My family tree looks like a forest. I have that hybrid vigor.”

“And a healthy immune system, I’ll bet,” Sangrid said approvingly, as he tapped on the menu icons to place their order. “I thought a bottle of wine would be nice as well. I hope you don’t have any problems with alcohol?”

“No, no,” Kelly replied, and took up the game. “I know some people believe that redheads can’t handle their booze, but I assure you it’s an old wives tale.”

“I knew that color was natural!” Sangrid practically beamed. “I’ll bet that those perfect teeth you flashed earlier are your own as well.”

“I do what I can,” Kelly replied and laughed outright at the direction of the conversation. If he thought she wouldn’t sit there all night accepting compliments, he was going to find out just how wrong he was.

“I must apologize in advance for the service being a bit slow here,” Sangrid told her while he fished inside his dinner jacket and pulled out a red velvet sack. “I brought along a little game to help pass the time,” he continued, pouring the contents out on the table and picking out a little wooden block with symbols on the sides. Suddenly he tossed it to her with a flick of his thumb, saying, “Have you ever seen one of these?”

Kelly’s hand shot up and she caught the game piece right in front of her nose, a feat that surprised her so much that she decided to play it cool and not say anything about the appropriateness of flinging something at your date’s face without warning.

“I think I’ve seen my friend’s daughters playing this game. Something to do with taking turns building a tower?” she guessed.

“Excellent. That’s exactly it,” he said as he bobbed his head approvingly. “The trick is, you have to stack them with the surface glyphs matching, but you can’t cover more than two of the red dots on the outline of the glyph at any point.”

“Oh, I see.” Kelly did a quick survey of the game pieces out on the table. “Do we get to pick them from the pile, or do we pick blindly from the bag?”

“I’m beginning to think you’re hustling me,” he joked, looking more pleased by the minute. “Flopsie can be played open face or closed face. The gamblers play closed face of course.”

“Shall I just start then?” Kelly asked. The she carefully balanced the piece he’d thrown at her, positioning its glyph against the identical glyph of a block on the table, leaving two dots exposed.

“Ah, I won’t give you such an easy one.” He grinned wickedly and stacked a matching block over her play, so that almost half of its weight was hanging over the edge in thin air.

“Cruel, cruel,” Kelly protested, studying the faces of the blocks for options. Then she made her choice and balanced the block gently on the stack, bringing the mass of the whole back towards the center.

“Perfect, not a hint of a tremor,” Sangrid proclaimed, then suddenly swept the little tower and the remaining blocks back into the bag. “Wine’s here.”

“You certainly keep things moving right along,” Kelly observed, as a waiter poured wine into their glasses, then paused to give them a chance to approve of the vintage.

“Thank you. I’m sure it’s fine,” Sangrid spoke bruskly to chase away the waiter. “I propose a toast,” he continued, raising his glass so high that the bottom of his face was concealed as he whispered, “Can you hear me now?”

“Yes.” Kelly laughed, then she narrowed her eyes conspiratorially and whispered in an even lower register, “Can you hear me now?”

“Very good, very good.” Sangrid took a long sip of wine, and set the glass back on the table, his smile broader than ever. Without the slightest show of self-consciousness, he placed his right elbow on the table, the hand open, and then he laid his left forearm on the table so the left hand was directly below the right. “Arm wrestle?”

Uh oh. The warning bells went off in Kelly’s head. This has just moved from a little eccentric to very weird. But he looked happy and, well, normal, so she hated to decline. Who knows? Maybe he spent the last few years in some place where this was acceptable behavior. She forced a chuckle, crossed palms with his right hand and grasped the left on the table.

“Go,” he said, and she reflexively tried to push his hand down, but she could feel he was only pushing back hard enough to keep their arms vertical, not trying to beat her. That was better, but a little insulting, so she shifted her chair a little and tried harder, putting her shoulder into it. He looked a little surprised as his arm was forced backwards, but also happy, as he exerted himself more strongly and forced her arm back to the vertical. Kelly made another effort which met with the same result, and then she slacked off, and he released both of her hands.

“Great, just great,” Sangrid enthused, as if he were a physical trainer who was helping her rehab from an injury. “Quick reactions, nice balance of fast twitch and slow twitch muscles. You really exceed all expectations, Kelly.”

“Thank you, Sangrid, but I’m beginning to have a strange feeling about all of this.” She kept her tone light, but there was no mistaking that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the way the date was going. “I’ve never been on a job interview, but I imagine it would be something like this.”

“You’ve hit the nail right on the head,” he confirmed her guess and slapped his hand on the table. “You have an excellent grasp of analogies and pattern recognition.”

Kelly felt herself starting to blush on hearing the high points of her self-image acknowledged and played back by a stranger, but she had no path other than forward. “So you see our date as a job interview?” she asked hesitantly, as the worm of doubt burrowed into the positive impression she had started to form of this cheerful, if somewhat peculiar man.

“Why, of course courting is like a job interview,” he replied, sounding almost surprised. “What could be more important than picking the right person to contribute half of the genes to your offspring? And would you want to accidentally fall in love with somebody you wouldn’t have chosen as a partner in a business?”

“You make the whole thing sound like a business,” Kelly complained. “Don’t you want romance, mutual attraction, that special spark?”

“We’re neither of us children, Kelly,” he remonstrated her, the beginnings of a frown appearing on his jovial countenance. “When people are well-matched, love may follow. But even if it doesn’t, they’re still well-matched, aren’t they?”

Kelly opened her mouth to reply and then closed it. She wasn’t going to debate him on the merits of love matches on a first date, but something about his vibe didn’t exactly match his words.

“It seems to me that well-matched needs to go beyond physical characteristics,” Kelly said slowly. “I get the feeling that you’re more focused on the offspring side of the issue.”

“Amazing, perfect, you really read my mind, Kelly,” he said, recovering his good humor. “That’s exactly what I wanted to talk about, but I couldn’t quite see how to bring it up. You see, I would be perfectly willing to pay you to have my child. I wouldn’t even insist on natural conception, as attractive as that proposition appears.” He concluded this speech with a charming smile, as if she should receive his proposition as the ultimate compliment.

Kelly slumped in her chair for a moment, then she pushed back from the table and rose to her feet. “I really don’t have anything else to say to you Sangrid. Thank you for the wine.”

“Wait, wait,” he objected frantically, reaching across the table and grabbing her wrist. “Just hear me out. If it’s pregnancy that scares you, we could arrange for a host mother. I would pay you for your eggs.”

She regarded him in horror, made more acute by the dawning fear that Eemas had set her up with this guy because their profiles matched. Sangrid mistook her momentary paralysis for second thoughts, and continued with his pitch.

“I can’t offer top dollar of course. You’ll have to admit you’re a couple years past prime for egg harvesting, but I guarantee it will be worth your while,” he pleaded.

Kelly jerked her wrist away, fixed him with a fierce stare, then grabbed the roses and rushed blindly from the restaurant. From aliens, to bride-stealers, to this jerk. Was it possible that her options were really this bad? Finding her way to the main drag of the Little Apple, she spotted Blythe working the outside tables of a café.

“Flowers for the lady, sir,” she heard Blythe’s practiced patter. “Buy a flower from a poor girl, Missus.” Kelly caught her eye and motioned her to come over.

“How’s business?” Kelly asked the girl, unable to suppress a grin at the begrimed face and the shabby dress.

“Great, Aunty Kelly,” Blythe answered. “I’ve only got these left, and Chastity ran out a while ago. It’s a big date night.”

“Do you want to buy these?” Kelly proffered the dozen roses she’d received from Sangrid.

Blythe bit her lower lip, and then glancing around as if she was worried somebody could be paying attention, she led Kelly into the doorway of a clothing store that was closed for the evening.

“We don’t really accept returns, Aunty Kelly, but since it’s you, I could go 10 centees,” she offered. “That’s almost what we pay the wholesaler for new, and yours are used.”

“You really are good at this, aren’t you?” Kelly grimaced and handed over the roses. “Are you girls saving up for anything special?”

“Can you keep a secret?” Blythe whispered, her eyes shiny with excitement.

“That depends, Blythe. If I thought you were going to do something that impacted your family, I guess I’d have to tell your mother.”

“Well, never mind then,” Blythe replied shortly. “If you’ll excuse me, I have flowers to sell.”

“Hey, what about my 10 centees?” Kelly protested.

“Oh, see Chastity about that. She handles the accounts payable,” Blythe replied matter-of-factly before starting back in on her pitch. “Fresh roses, 25 centees a dozen.”

Kelly started after her, then turned and headed off in the other direction, towards the Burger Bar. She had just enough money to treat herself to a normal dinner, one without voyeuristic plasma creatures watching her chew. It was probably bad for karma to sell date flowers in any case, no matter how rotten the date.

Eleven

Joe dispensed with the silver suit for his second Eemas date in the theory that it had brought him bad luck. Instead he wore an old dress uniform with all the identifying marks removed. The buttons were a little tight across his gut, but sorting through metal scrap helped keep him in shape, especially since mass doesn’t disappear with weight in lower gravity and his tendency was to just lift more. Chasing Beowulf around the scrap yard to get back his gloves helped also, though he couldn’t get over the feeling that the dog was exercising him like a four-legged drill sergeant.

The date was at Camelot, a medieval-themed hotel casino that was primarily popular with humanoid species who favored edged weapons. Most sentient beings who retained personal weaponry ended up eschewing the advanced hand weapons that could slice a building in half in favor of sharp and pointy things that cut and stabbed. You never knew if the other party would have defensive technology in place that could turn your energy or projectile weapons against you.

Hereditary rulers preferred not to have a lot of high-tech weapons that could turn every peasant into an army rattling around a planet. Sticking with old-fashioned weapons on the ground meant that trained soldiers had a tremendous advantage over rabbles and militias, but as soon as spaceships were involved, victory went to the technically advanced. Most interplanetary and interspecies conflicts were fought and decided with words, before any large-scale bloodshed took place.

Joe’s dress uniform was really a standard officer’s uniform that didn’t have any repair patches on it, patches which frequently aligned with scars on his skin. It was primarily recognizable as a military uniform by the number of pockets and loops for holding various weapons and other field necessities. Stripped of combat survival gear, it resembled something an upscale tradesman might wear.

As he cut through the Little Apple on his way to Camelot, wearing the uniform brought Joe’s senses onto high alert and he spotted the ambush laid by the flower girl in time to cross to the other side of the main drag. Chuckling to himself, he looked back over his shoulder to see how she reacted to being outsmarted, then came to a dead stop as something soft bounced off of his long legs. A tearful little face looked up at him.

“Please excuse me,” Joe stammered, finding he had almost run down a petite ten-year-old girl in an old frock with smudges on her face.

“Oh, sir, look what you’ve done to my flowers.” The girl stared up at him pathetically while pointing at the mound of yellow daisies on the walkway. Joe was no horticultural expert, but they looked slightly wilted to him, perhaps leftovers from a slow evening the night before. But he knew when he was beat.

“How much for the lot?” he asked, trying to sound cheerful about it.

“All of them?” Her eyes opened so wide that they seemed to stretch from one side of her head to the other, with just the thinnest strip of nose to keep them apart. “We usually get 15 centees a dozen for daisies, but since you’re taking all of them, I could make you a special price of 50 centees for the lot.” Without waiting for an answer, she squatted down and rapidly aligned the stems of the fallen flowers into a bulging bouquet, which to Joe’s eye, looked like it contained less than three dozen daises. He sighed and fished a handful of coins out of his pocket.

“Are you related to the girl selling flowers across the corridor?” he asked to cover his embarrassment as he separated out two 25-centee pieces for her.

“She’s my older sister,” the girl replied, taking the money. “We’re saving to buy a baby brother.”

“Buy a baby brother? Is that even legal?” Joe asked in surprise, not being all that well informed about family law on the station.

“Of course,” the girl told him, with a look that suggested he had just arrived from some backwards mining colony with no running water. “The Stryx always balance their books.”

“But what does that have to do with it?” he began, then remembered he was on his way to a date. “I wish you and your sister luck with the baby brother thing.”

“Thank you, sir.” The girl bobbed her head and dropped a cute curtsey that took the sting out of the transaction.

Five minutes later, Joe strode into the Camelot with his monster bouquet of flowers, wondering if he should have just picked out the nicest single daisy and thrown the rest into a disposal chute. He was ashamed to admit, even to himself, that the only thing stopping him from doing so was the suspicion that one of those little girls would pop out from nowhere and catch him in the act. Joe wasn’t sure if he was more afraid that their feelings would be hurt or that they would sell him a new batch.

The notification from Eemas had described his date as “regal, blue veil, silver spurs,” so Joe assumed she would be easy to spot. Looking around the faux stone hall with the giant artificial fireplace, fake torches in sconces, and the dinging of slot machines in the distance, he was struck by the number of blue veiled damsels jangling about in silver spurs. As he stood trying to decide his next move, a particularly regal figure separated herself from the mob and approached him.

“Welcome, our hero,” she spoke regally, extending her arm with the hand hanging palm downwards. Joe had fought on enough feudalisticly governed worlds to guess that she expected him to take her hand and either drop to one knee or bend deeply at the waist and brush her knuckles with a kiss. He went with the second option, and after releasing her hand, extended the overstuffed bouquet.

“Joe McAllister at your service,” he introduced himself. “I’m glad you were able to spot me from my description,” he continued. “I didn’t expect to see so many blue veiled women with spurs.”

“But we are the only queen here! Queen Ayre, you may address us,” she said imperiously. “Surely you were looking directly at us before we approached, as befitting the lady of the castle in greeting a suitor.”

“Uh, yes, of course,” Joe answered, trying to deconstruct the implant’s interpretation of a speech pattern which he had the nagging feeling he had heard in the past. On impulse, he triggered the mental switch to put the implant on hold and waited for her to begin speaking again.

“I can see by these flowers that you have journeyed a long way over a difficult path,” she continued with just a hint of regal sarcasm. “Let us remove to the dining hall where a repast awaits hungry travelers.”

Vergallian! The language came back to him in an instant, and he silently thanked his deceased mother who had opened his mind to the love of learning languages in his childhood. Joe had spent nearly three years in Vergallian space, and as he followed Queen Ayre to the dining hall, he wracked his memory for details about their culture.

The Vergallians dominated nearly a hundred star systems with a strange mix of feudal society and advanced technology.  A general on Hwoult Five once mentioned to Joe in passing that an invasion fleet was being prepared to add Earth to the Vergal empire at the time the Stryx stepped in and took the humans under their metallic wing. While the Vergallians were not pleased with the interference, neither did they consider Earth any great loss.

Silver spurs jingling, she led him into a narrow dining hall with a long table running down the center. Minstrels near the entrance plucked at crude stringed instruments, which had the beneficial effect of softening the casino noises into what could have been expected from a distant street carnival or a joust. Queen Ayre halted next to an empty spot at the table, and Joe moved quickly to pull out a chair, into which she settled with regal grace. He took the seat at her right, which he now recalled was traditional for a man of arms. The left-hand seat was traditionally saved for the wise man or the fool, he couldn’t recall which.

“We are pleased to find a well-bred knight so far from home,” Queen Ayre spoke as she turned to him. She lifted her veil and threw it back over her hair, revealing the chiseled, symmetrical features typical of the Vergallian elite. “Are you familiar with our lovely domains?”

“Can’t say I am,” Joe replied in English, since speaking Vergallian would put lie to his words. She did specify “our” domains, after all, and he had never heard of her before. An inkling of a half-remembered rumor made him play his cards close to the vest, as the Vergallians hadn’t amassed an empire without chewing up and spitting out the unwary. “Is this your first Eemas date?”

Queen Ayre lost her regal bearing for a split second, and behind the mask of her exquisitely formed features flashed a look of irritation. “Nooo,” she drawled slowly, taking a moment to formulate a reply. “We have not been pleased with the heroes selected by Eemas to this point. We have very high standards.”

“I see.” Joe nodded his acknowledgement as a waiter, or was he a serving man, placed two mugs of foaming ale before them. “Well, what are you doing so far from home?”

“We are seeking a hero,” she proclaimed, recovering her poise and fixing him with a hypnotic stare. Joe began to feel highly vulnerable as he remembered that some Vergallian women could produce human compatible pheromones that would put a queen bee to shame. “Are you a hero, Joe?”

“Well, I’m still alive, so if I am a hero, I must be pretty good at it,” he joked as he set down his mug and attempted a roguish smile, the impact of which was blunted by the heavy foam sticking to his upper lip.

“Are you afraid of death, Joe?” she asked, watching him intently. “Would you not gamble all to win a kingdom and a lady fair?”

“I might at that,” Joe answered, intending it as a compliment to her beauty rather than as a commitment. Her smile hit him like a flash grenade, and the afterimage made him wonder if he’d actually been strobed by a mini-blinder. After a couple blinks, his vision cleared, just in time to see her stowing away a small blue vial in her boot.

“You have led cavalry in war, yes? We detected signs in your walk and the way you hold yourself that you are at home in the saddle.”

“It’s been a few years since I worked as a horse soldier,” he admitted, taking another sip of ale. It seemed to have gone flat already, or maybe ale brewed to an authentic old recipe changed flavor and lost fizz rapidly after it was drawn from the barrel. Joe also began to wonder if the pheromones were getting at him, since he suddenly felt hazy. He took another pull at the ale in hopes it would clear his head.

“In these wars where you led cavalry, did you win?” she pressed on. Somehow, coming up with the answer she wanted to hear took on a sudden urgency. But if there was one thing Joe couldn’t lie about, it was fighting.

“Won some, lost some, never got killed,” he mumbled, thick-tongued. “Hey, how about we go somewhere a little quieter? I can show you my scars.” But he flubbed the attempt to stand up because both legs felt like they were falling asleep, except the pins-and-needles sensation in the left leg included something that felt more like a nick from a dagger. “What ‘zactly are you offering, lady Queen?”

“Ourselves!” she spoke proudly, striking a regal pose in her chair. “The Vergallian Cycle is coming to completion on Terwell, and we require an off-world hero to retain for us our rightful inheritance.”

Vergallian Cycle, Joe repeated to himself. Wasn’t that the reason he had been fighting on Hwoult Five, a battle for succession that took place according to some astronomical schedule? There was something about it that he just couldn’t quite put his finger on, but what was it? Something related to immolation? He reactivated the translation implant in hopes it would do a better job with the details.

“Only once every thirty-two years is the competition for supremacy on Terwell open to outsiders. We requested Eemas to find us a hero with the courage and experience to lead a unit of cavalry in the competition for our hand in matrimony,” she continued, and each word seemed to drive a warm spike through his heart. Yes, here was a woman to fight for, to wager one’s life against a kingdom.

“Yes,” he said aloud, barely aware of the fact, at which point she whipped a parchment scroll tied with an ornate silken ribbon out of her sleeve. Queen Ayre rapidly unrolled and smoothed the somewhat stained and abused document before him on the table. Next she pulled a messy inkpot from a hidden pocket, followed by a wicked looking quill.

“Just sign here at the bottom,” she instructed him, as she primed the quill with red ink and forced it into his hand. “Sign, and it’s off to the honeymoon suite, where we will open a world of pleasures to our hero.”

“Just sign,” he repeated thickly, as his eyes tried to focus on the proper area of the parchment and he struggled to read calligraphed letters from an alphabet he hadn’t seen in years. “Where it says, ‘sacrificial king?’”

Queen Ayre’s face went white with rage as she snatched back the scroll and rapidly rolled it up into a tight baton. Joe swayed in his chair, unclear what he could have done to upset the most desirable woman he’d ever met in his life, then he slumped forward onto the table and passed out. Nobody took any notice as the Queen rose, replaced her veil, and swept regally from the room.

The effects of the drugged ale wore off in less than a half hour, which gave the pheromone-induced clouds time to clear from Joe’s head as well. When he came to, he had to peel the side of his face from the table where a previous customer had spilled mead and oatmeal. The moment he levered himself back into an upright position, a serving man carrying a nasty looking mace appeared with the check.

“That’s two Galahad Ales at 1 cred, plus 50 centees for sleeping on the table and a 25 centee suggested gratuity,” the serving man recited, twirling the heavy mace idly by the wrist loop.